


Pine

by Germinal



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-14 23:24:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5762977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Germinal/pseuds/Germinal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Johanna passes the time by thinking, since she can’t avoid it. She tries not to look over too many times at the empty bed opposite hers.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [furchte_die_schildkrote](https://archiveofourown.org/users/furchte_die_schildkrote/gifts).



Contrary to popular belief, Johanna Mason doesn’t like to be left alone. She’s always got too many thoughts to keep her company.

It doesn’t help, being left alone. She despises drunks and always has, but sometimes she thinks drinking would help, like the morphling did. Talking doesn’t help at all but she might as well talk anyway. Sleep used to help but then she started to have those dreams, so now she just lies awake and fights off sleep until she passes out. She passes the time until then by thinking, since she can’t avoid it. She tries not to look over too many times at the empty bed opposite hers.

Johanna had never been a nice girl. Johanna had never been pure, romantic, iconic. No one had ever looked at her and seen her as the heroine of their war game or their glorious rebellion or their love story. Johanna was only ever a support act, a bodyguard, a back-up. A bit-part. Hired muscle. And now she wasn’t even fit for that. Not like the Mockingjay. Johanna would never be a star, even if she wanted to be. 

That braid of hair as solid as a climbing rope, that girl with eyes like flint, that bitch. Johanna had made more sacrifices for that girl’s safety than she’d made to keep herself sane. She’d gone through hell for her, and back, and now? Now she panicked at the sight and sound of water, like a rabid dog. Oh, Johanna understood the greater good, but she didn’t have to like it. 

The other bed, with its tucked-in and tidied sheets, looks stark and cold. Johanna shuts her eyes and turns over. 

She remembers that girl with her dark hair loose and snaking over the plain white pillow, her pale grey eyes shocked open, her mouth pressed hard against Johanna’s and her fingers trailing warm and oddly gentle down Johanna’s naked back. The early hours of some anonymous morning were quiet and heavy around them. That girl kept trying to say something stupid and comforting and Johanna kept heading her off with a hand between her legs, a bite at her plump lower lip. What they did had too many teeth involved for it to count as kissing. 

And then that girl had gathered fucking pine needles for her. Of all the things to do. Johanna had held her hands cupped in her lap, looked at the needles pooled like deep water. Green and dense and scented like the woods back home. And then she'd thought of heavy clouds and darkening skies, of pouring rain, and closed her eyes and shivered. The usual necessary fury that took her mind off her bottomless fear was there but, for some reason, both feelings seemed to hover just out of reach. This didn’t feel like safety but it did at least feel warm and dry. That girl, that fire. Johanna had stared down at her hands and let the tiny points of the needles prick the pads of her fingers and it had helped, a little, or as much as anything ever did. 

It still helps, a little, whenever she does it. It’s weird, like love, but Johanna’s never had a problem with picking up whatever scraps she can get.

**Author's Note:**

> My first try at Hunger Games fic. 
> 
> Treat written for chocolatebox2015, from a prompt by furchte_die_schildkrote. Hope you like it!


End file.
